11/12/13

Anal Probe for a Traffic Stop?

David Eckert was pulling out of a Wal-Mart parking lot when
police officers pulled him over for failing to stop at a parking lot
stop sign. Police ordered Eckert to step out of his vehicle, and that's
when he committed the highly suspicious act of "clenching his buttocks."
The officers' natural reaction? This man must be hiding narcotics in
his anal cavity.
Being pulled over for a minor traffic violation is never a pleasant
experience, but these Deming, New Mexico police officers took it to an
atrocious new level, forcing Mr. Eckert to undergo a colonoscopy, anal
probes, and defecation in a search for drugs. Yes, you read that
correctly: the War on Drugs is being waged on minor traffic violators
with enemas and sedatives.
After pulling Mr. Eckert over, officers obtained a search warrant for
an anal cavity search and drove Eckert to a Deming hospital. In the one
act of sanity in this insane saga, doctors at that hospital refused to
conduct the search, saying it would be unethical. Undeterred by such
ethical concerns, police then took Eckert to Gila Regional Medical
Center, where, over Eckert's objections, doctors performed an x-ray of
Eckert's cavity, three enemas, a colonoscopy, and several cavity
searches, as well as forced him to defecate in front of them. No drugs
were ever found.
As egregious as the police conduct here was, sadly this case is only
one of many examples of police overreach in fighting the failed War on
Drugs. This August, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit held
that police could not use drugs discovered in the buttocks of Felix
Booker, a Texas man who was pulled over for driving with expired tags
and, upon being suspected of having marijuana, was strip-searched,
sedated intravenously, intubated, and subjected to an anal probe.
Calling the search "one of the greatest dignitary intrusions that could
flow from a medical procedure," the Court ruled that the forced
procedures violated Booker's Fourth Amendment rights. In two separate
incidents in Texas this August, police officers probed
the genitals and anal regions of four women suspected of possessing
marijuana during routine traffic stops (you can see the horrifying video
footage of the searches here). No drugs were found during the cavity searches.
Minor traffic stops should not be pretexts for invasive, degrading, and needless medical procedures. Eckert has filed a lawsuit
against the City of Deming and its police officers for their outrageous
conduct, including arguing that the search went far beyond what was
permitted by the warrant. His lawsuit, and the media coverage of the
indignity to which he was subjected, should serve as yet another wake-up
call to police departments and politicians around the country that the
War on Drugs – which has trampled constitutional rights and overcrowded
our jails and prisons – must end.

Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.Benjamin FranklinOne has not only a legal, but a moral responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws.Martin Luther King

"America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves."Abraham Lincoln

“If tyranny and oppression come to this land it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy.”James Madison